Friday, December 23, 2016

It is hard not to be a pessimist these days. As 2016 comes to an end, it leaves us with that bitter feeling of "WTF world!". In gloomy days like these, having a long term perspective on human development can help us alleviate this feeling.

The image below brings 6 charts that give a historical perspective on human development (detailed and interactive charts here). They show the big picture of some of the remarkable improvements we have seen in the world in the last 200 years, with less poverty and tyranny and with more education and better health conditions.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

A few weeks ago, anonymous hackers attacked the computers that run the public transport system of San Francisco, which wouldn't take any payments from passengers. The hackers demanded a ransom of 100 Bitcoin (about $73,000) but didn't get any money. Full story here, by Jack Stewart.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the first case a cyber-attack targets a public transport system. Certainly, this will not be the last one. This kind of event is likely to become more common as cities adopt 'smart' strategies of urban management that increasingly connect public services to integrated systems and the 'internet of things'.

This picture taken the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) shows residents of the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk, queuing to receive food supplies, in Damascus, Syria, on January 31, 2014.

If you would like to help, consider donating to organizations with the greatest capacity to make a difference amid this devastation.

As some of you will know, I am in my 4th year of my PhD at TSU, under the supervision of Tim Schwanen and David Banister. I have to say this has been a fantastic and humbling experience and I feel extremely privileged to be part of this institution, which I would highly recommend to prospective students and researchers. TSU is a relatively small research group with some extremely smart researchers in an incredibly vibrant department at one of the top universities in the world.

ps. the city of Oxford is also lovely but the the weather is not exactly what you would find in Hawaii.

As I've mentioned before in the blog, this is a review paper on distributive justice in transportation, particularly focused on transport accessibility and social exclusion. While transport planning has been traditionally concerned with improving the efficiency of transport systems, this paper argues why policy makers and researchers should take issues of equity more seriously and it discusses how justice could be considered in evaluating the distributional aspects of who benefits from transport policies and investments.

In short, the paper:

reviews how issues of equity and social exclusion have been covered in the transport and mobilities literatures

reviews five key theories of justice (utilitarianism, libertarianism, intuitionism, Rawls’ egalitarianism, and Capability Approaches) and critically evaluates the insights they generate when applied to transport

proposes a distributive justice framework for policy evaluation, with a focus on transport accessibility and social exclusion

Core ideas of the paper

In the final part of the paper, we build a dialogue
between Rawls’ egalitarianism and the Capabilities Approach to propose that distributive
justice concerns over transport disadvantage and social exclusion
should focus primarily on accessibility as a human capability. This
means that, in policy evaluation, a detailed analysis of the
distributional effects of transport policies should take account of
the setting of minimum standards of accessibility to key
destinations and the extent to which these policies respect
individuals’ rights and prioritise disadvantaged groups, reduce
inequalities of opportunities, and mitigate transport externalities.
A full account of justice in transportation requires a more
complete understanding of accessibility than traditional
approaches have been able to deliver to date.

As you will have noticed, there are five key points developed in the paper. I should try to unpacked them in another post in the future.

Focus on accessibility as a human capability

Minimum standards of accessibility to key destinations

Respect for individuals’ rights

Prioritization of disadvantaged groups and reduction of inequalities of opportunities

Mitigation of transport externalities

Practical implications

For now, I close this post with some of the practical implicationsof the ideas proposed in the paper:

"Some of the practical implications of this perspective can be illustrated with issues that
commonly arise in cities with investments in public transport (e.g. metro and bus rapid
transit developments) and cycling/walking. These types of investments can be good
ways to prioritise transport modes which are more widely used by low-income classes.
To be considered fair, however, these investments should not override the social rights
of families threatened with eviction due to the infrastructure projects. The distributional
effects of such investments should be evaluated in terms of the extent to which they
reduce inequalities in transport accessibility, particularly by improving the accessibility levels of low-income public transport-dependent groups to key destinations such as
employment opportunities, healthcare, and education services. According to this
approach, the design of those transport projects (including the design of vehicles, stations,
cycle paths, etc.) must be inclusive towards social groups such as the elderly and disabled
in order to minimise the impact that non-chosen disadvantages have on people’s capacity
to access activities. Moreover, this perspective also calls for complementary policies that
discourage car use (e.g. congestion/parking charge and fuel tax) in highly congested
and polluted areas to mitigate the negative externalities imposed by drivers on everyone
else, particularly on vulnerable populations" p.15-16

I will be glad if some of you have read this far without falling asleep.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Google Earth Engine has released new data for their project Timelapse, which combines over 5 million satellite images acquired over the past three decades and allows for a zoomable video of land transformations at a global scale. You can play around procrastinate on their website zooming in different areas. I find Dubai and Las Vegas particularly interesting. There is a good playlist on Youtube!

This is the timelapse of Brasilia (Federal District), my hometown. During this period between 1984 and 2016, the population of Brasilia went from approx. 1.2 million to 2.9 million. The video shows some very interesting transformations including the expansion of poor settlements largely undeserved by urban infra-structure in the south and southwest of the city, but also some illegal occupations of protected areas by middle- and high-income gated communities in the east and north-east parts of the city.